The Everything Guide to the Human Brain: Journey Through the Parts of the Brain, Discover How It Works, and Improve Your Brain’s Health

361 Pages·2013·2.67 MB·English

by  Rudolph C. Hatfield

GUIDE TO THE
HUMAN BRAIN
Journey through the parts of the brain, discover how
it works, and improve your brain’s health
Rudolph C. Hatfield, PhD
THE
EVERYTHING
®
GUIDE TO THE
HUMAN BRAIN
Dear Reader,
My vision for this project was to create an easy, straightforward,
and nontechnical guide that could explain what we know about
how the brain functions. My intent was not to create a textbook,
and this book would certainly not be appropriate as a text for a
college course, but it might be an appropriate supplement to a
textbook for a course in biological psychology.
Nonetheless, it is extremely hard not to get a little technical
when discussing the brain; it is my hope that the explanations in
this book are straightforward. While the book is accurate
according to our current understanding of the brain, it is still very
general in nature and any single chapter could be expanded to the
point of being a full-length book on its own.
When writing this book, I decided to use as close to a casual
conversational tone as possible. That decision may have resulted
in some rambling and other foibles that I exhibit personally, but
hopefully the tone of the book allows readers to understand it
better. If you read this book and come away with an
understanding and appreciation of just how complex the human
brain is, then I have done my job.

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PUBLISHER Karen Cooper
MANAGING EDITOR, EVERYTHING® SERIES Lisa Laing COPY CHIEF Casey Ebert
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Visit the entire Everything® series at www.everything.com
This book is dedicated to my family for putting up with all my antics for all these years.
Contents
The Top 10 Fascinating Facts About Your Brain
Introduction
01
A Quick View
The Two Different Nervous Systems
How the Central Nervous System Works
Mixing Chemicals and Electricity: The Neuron
Other Types of Cells in the CNS
The Spinal Cord
Neuroimaging and Other Ways of Looking at the Brain
02
Dividing Up the Brain
North-South-In-Out: Directional Descriptions
Forebrain, Midbrain, Hindbrain
What’s with All the Wrinkles? Gyri and Sulci
Lateralization: Left Brain or Right Brain
Cortical and Subcortical Areas
Lobes of Fun
Cover My Brain Please: The Meninges
Holes in Your Brain: The Ventricles
Important Brain Structures
03
Can You Believe Your Eyes? The Process of Vision
The Principles of Sensory Organization
The Process of Seeing
What Was That Shape?
How You See Motion
How You Perceive Color
Impaired Vision and Visual Illusions
04
Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil: Language and Your Brain
How You Heard That
The Process of Speaking
How You Read
The Effect of Brain Damage on Language
05
Do You Feel Me? The Sense of Touch
How You Obtain Balance: Vestibular Sensation
Touch Me: Somatosensation
Skin to the Brain
What a Pain: Pain Perception
Pain Control
06
Chemicals in Your Brain: Taste and Smell
How Many Different Tastes Are There?
The Brain and Taste
That Smell Went Right to Your Brain
Olfactory Projections
Pheromones
07
You Move Me
Muscles and Their Movements
Units of Movement
The Basal Ganglia
The Cerebellum
How Your Cortex Moves You
Programs in Your Head
Movement Disorders
08
Hot, Hungry, and Thirsty: Internal Body States
Homeostasis
Temperature Regulation
Thirst and Your Brain
Hunger
Eating Disorders
09
Sex
Sex Hormones
Hormones and Reproductive Behavior in Females and Males
Development and Puberty
Determinants of Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation
Thinking about Sex
Sex Offenders
10
The Sleeping Brain
Bodily Rhythms
Neural Mechanisms of Circadian Rhythms
Stages of Sleep
The Dreaming Brain
The Functions of Sleep
Disorders of Sleep
11
You Have to Grow Up Sometime: The Developing Brain
Growth and Brain Differentiation
The Old Nature Versus Nurture Debate